Qualcomm has bought AMD’s handset division for $65 million. AMD has disposed of the handset business to exclusively focus on its fundamental businesses. The handset business has only spewed losses and caused despair ever since it fell into AMD’s lap as part of its 2006 acquisition of ATI.

Qualcomm has agreed to retain some of the existing employees involved in the handset division, although the exact figure hasn’t been revealed. Qualcomm will use the technology, which has changed hands as part of the deal, to develop more advanced graphics and audio solutions for mobile devices.

Samsung and Elpida will be introducing new 50nm DDR DIMMs this year that will feature higher densities and speeds, while lowering latencies, power consumption and costs.

Thanks to Elpida’s new 50nm process that uses fluoride immersion lithography with copper interconnect technology; there will be a 25 percent speed boost from the very first generation of these new sticks of DDR3.

Samsung’s process is aimed specifically at making 2GB DDR3 sticks, and is presumed to become their prime creation process this year. They’re reporting a 60 percent increase in productivity over their DDR2 equivalents.

The prices of all this fancy new DDR3 is expected to drop from 100 percent down to only 10 percent by the time Lynnfield and Windows 7 launch in Q3 of this year. And according to the International Data Corporation, DDR3 sales will account for 29 percent of the total DRAM units sold in 2009. From there, it’s expected to boost to 72 percent in 2011.

There are numerous websites that allow you to download Youtube videos – and videos hosted on other sites – directly to your desktop. All of them have capitalized on the lack of a downloading feature on Youtube. However, they might just have to conceive a superb contingency plan as Youtube has jeopardized their very existence by inaugurating an indigenous download feature.

The feature is currently only available on President Obama’s Youtube channel as Google appears to be testing waters. You can check it out at this link.

Citing un-named notebook makers, DigiTimes says Intel will launch its next generation Atom processor, currently codenamed Pineview, in the second half of 2009. The new chip will come in both single- and dual-core flavors, although the dual-core variant will only be used in nettops, DigiTimes says.

The new chip will be built using a 45nm manufacturing process with built-in Northbridge functions, such as an integrated memory controller and graphics. Intel is expected to pair the new chip with its upcoming Tiger Point Southbridge to create a new, lower cost netbook platform currently codenamed Pine Trail-M.

But not only will future netbooks cost less as a result of Pineview, but they might be smaller too. By integrating the Northbridge with the CPU, Pineview requires significantly less motherboard space by up to 60 percent, bringing the total down from 2,174mm squared (Atom N270 + 945GC) to 773mm squared. The new platform will also cut back the amount of PCB layers from six to four, while also reducing maximum TDP from 8W to 7W.

In other words, look for tomorrow's netbooks to be smaller, faster, consume less power, and easier on the wallet.

Doogie Houser may have been performing surgery at 14, the age the fictional sitcom character became the youngest licensed doctor in the country, but we bet he couldn't build a PC. But little Marko Calasan can, a real 8-year-old boy who has become the youngest Microsoft-certified IT computer system administrator. Calasan, who is being called the Mozart of Computers, edges out 9-year-old M Lavinashree of India as the youngest certified IT Pro.

"The Microsoft officials gave me computer games and DVDs with cartoons when I passed the exams because I am a child. That was nice, but I’m not really interested in those things," Calasan toldThe Times.

What young Marko is interested in is becoming a computer scientist when he grows up and has aspirations of creating a new operating system.

Move over HP and IBM, and make room for Cisco Systems. Cisco, who has remained focused on routers, switches, and other networking gear and software responsible for the majority of its $40 billion a year in revenue and 65 percent gross profit margins, plans to release a server computer equipped with sophisticated virtualization software within the next few months, according to The New York Times.

"This will be the most important and most talked-about product of the year," said Brent Bracelin, a hardware analyst for Pacific Crest Securities. "There will be massive competitive reactions from both IBM. and HP, and we expect this will lead to a new wave of industry consolidation."

Cisco, who views the move "not as new market, but a market transition," will focus just on virtual applications rather than release a general purpose server. Other details remain sparse and Cisco isn't yet saying what exactly it envisions for its new product, but rumors suggest the company will also bundle networking hardware and virtualization software from Cisco and VMware, the latter of which Cisco owns close to a 2 percent stake.

Twitter isn't just great for finding out what Will Smith had for lunch on Friday (KFC, in case you were wondering) or how Norman Chan feels about chicken fried bacon, it's also capable of keeping you in the loop when it comes to current events. When something newsworthy happens, you can bet your chicken fried bacon there will be plenty of Tweets covering the action. But not only can the information be unreliable, but getting your news in 140-character nibbles doesn't always work out. And hitting up news outlets like Google News, which rely on algorithms to rank stories, doesn't always deliver the story you're looking for quick enough.

To solve these problems, Yahoo BOSS engineer Vik Singh has created TweetNews. The new service compares Yahoo's news results to hot new topics flowing through Twitter, using that information to organize and prioritize news stories. The end result is a search engine mashup that tracks Twitter feeds for fast updates on the stories you're most interested in reading.

"Basically this service boosts Yahoo’s freshest news search results (which typically don’t have much relevance since they are ordered by timestamp and that’s it) based on how similar they are to the emerging topics found on Twitter for the same query (hence using Twitter to determine authority for content that don’t yet have links because they are so fresh)," Singh wrote on his blog.

Will this change the way you get your news? Hit the jump and post your thoughts.

Last week an unusual number of Seagate 1TB Barracuda hard drive owners came forward complaining of lock ups and other related hard drive failures. The problem appeared to affect Barracuda 7200.11 drives made in Thailand (ST3100034AS), to which Seagate ultimately determined was the result of faulty firmware. But now users are complaining that the updated firmware Seagate posted has only made matters worse.

According to Tomshardware, "100 percent of users who attempted the update have bricked their drives with the new firmware" after updating to version SD1A. The update is now "temporarily taken offline as of Jan 19, 2008 8PM CST for validation," but users who managed to attempt the update before it was taken offline say they are getting read errors preventing them from accessing the data.

While the knowledgebase article makes no mention of manufacture date, one user who contacted Seagate customer support claims he was told only drives manufactured in December need to be updated, and his drive, which was built in October, failed because of this. Whether or not that's the case, we'll have to wait until hearing an official word from Seagate. In the meantime, if you're an affected owner, you'd do well to keep an eye on this thread.

Todd Jackson, Google's Product Manager for Gmail, told CNet in a recent interview "We know people's file sizes are getting bigger. They want to share their files, keep them in the cloud, and not worry about which computer they're on. Google wants to be solving these problems." And while Jackson didn't specifically mention the oft rumored Google Drive, Mac users point out that Google's recently released Picasa for Mac gives users the option to move an image collection to 'Google Web Drive.' Not convinced? Consider that a WHOIS check of googlewebdrive.com reveals Google's name servers, suggesting such a service is a matter of when, not if.

TGDaily believes "the service has the potential to eclipse even Gmail, Google's second best-known product after their google.com search engine." But would it? Cloud-based storage isn't a new concept, and several services already exist offering to host your files online. But Google has the advantage of owning, by last estimate, an infinite number of servers (we rounded up), paving the way for the search giant to offer much more space at no cost, and perhaps wrapped up in a sleek user interface. Throw in some useful features like malware scanning, image backups, auto-syncing, and whatever else Google might be working on, and TGDaily might just be right. But this all assumes you're ready to store your data in the cloud.

Hit the jump and tell us whether or not you could see yourself replacing your storage drive with Gdrive.

Mods, oodles of control configurations, switches and sliders for unholy graphical settings even God was unaware existed – these are the things that allegedly make PC gaming special. Clothesline inexperienced gamers with this taught branch of options, however, and they’ll see their first Game Over before even glimpsing the start screen. BioWare CEO Ray Muzyka’s solution? Er, it’s kinda vague.

“I think there are more people playing PC games and more dollars being spent on the PC space than ever before, but it’s taking a different form,” the good doctor told CVG.

“We can still make deep rich experiences but we have to make them easy to access, you have make the control system really easy to use, and you have to make people feel like they’re playing an experience that they can play how they want to play it, whether that is long sessions or short sessions.”

How does BioWare intend to make space for graduates of the PopCap Academy without giving core gamers the boot, though? Your comment section dialogue options are as follows:

“[Persuasion] Why even bother with casual gamers? They’ve only spurned your advances in the past.”

“Wait a minute, Muzyka! Sounds like you’re talking about console games to me!”

“Well, BioWare, you’ve never failed me in the past, so why should I doubt you now? I’m exceptionally level-headed and uninteresting.” (Click here for light side points.)